


Neon Moon

by flyingcarpet



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vegas, Community: xover_exchange, Crossover, Episode: s05e19 Vegas, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-18
Updated: 2010-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 11:38:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingcarpet/pseuds/flyingcarpet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Detective John Sheppard thinks he's seen it all, until a cute blonde shows him a side of Las Vegas he never knew existed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neon Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trovia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trovia/gifts).



> Written as part of the 2010 xover_exchange on lj. Thanks to silveronthetree for beta-reading, and to perdiccas and aurilly for putting the fest together.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. People come to the city for a chance to go wild, to do things they'd otherwise never do and to leave the consequences behind them in a cloud of dust.

Detective John Sheppard lives in that cloud of dust and abandoned consequences. It's a place where anything can happen, where a man with his eyes open will see more in a week than most people imagine in a month.

After four years in this electric oasis, Sheppard thinks he's run out of surprises. He's wrong.

He walks through the Flamingo on a Wednesday afternoon, when the good people of Nevada are hard at work. Outside, the sun is beating down on the desert sand, but inside the slot machines and blackjack tables are always shaded by perpetual night. Sheppard tells himself he's looking for a suspect in last week's domestic case, but he knows it's bullshit. The truth is that he can't stay away.

John soaks everything in as he walks by the clusters of clanging slot machines, the glowing neon and the laughing or grim-faced patrons. It's his natural habitat in a way, even though half the time he still feels as new as the fresh-faced tourists that crowd the cheap steak buffets and play the nickel slots all night.

On the upper level there's a little blonde leaning on the railing and holding a glass in one hand. Something about the girl snags his attention, makes him look twice. At first, it's just her legs he notices, but after a moment he realizes that she stands out from the crowd for other reasons. She's dressed like a tourist, in high heels and a miniskirt, but her face is as grim and determined as any hard-core gambler's. She's not drinking her cocktail, either. He crosses the floor at his normal shambling pace and climbs the stairs to stand at the railing beside her.

"Come here often?" he asks, and she turns to look at him with hard green eyes. After a moment, she smiles and suddenly looks her age, which is much too young for John. He doesn't mind.

"Mostly, I'm here for the music," she says. The clanging, jangling sound of the slot machines drowns out all other noises on the casino floor. John grins at her.

"Business or pleasure?" he asks, because she doesn't look like it's either right now. She looks like she might be a local, and he finds himself hoping she is.

"Business," she says, then turns her head and zeroes in on someone on the floor below. She's already leaving as she says, "See you later," over her shoulder. Sheppard watches her go, enjoying the view of the miniskirt as she walks away, but feeling an unfamiliar disappointment.

\------

With one lonely chip in the pocket of his coat, Sheppard leaves the blackjack table and walks across the floor of the casino. He pushes open a swinging door that leads to a long service corridor, a familiar shortcut to the parking lot. He stops short when he sees a couple embracing at the end of the hall, near a round window. The guy's arms are wrapped around his date, but she's struggling to get away. Sheppard's seen this a hundred times in this city, and he doesn't hesitate; he pulls his gun and sets off toward the couple.

As he approaches, the couple turns and he can see that the girl is the same one he'd been talking to earlier. A circle of sunlight shines through the porthole window at the end of the corridor, a bright backdrop to their dance.

"Hold it, dirtbag!" he yells, "Let the lady go." He's running now, but they're moving down the hall as he runs, getting closer to the door.

As he draws near, the girl struggles free and shoves her date away from her, through the door and out into the parking lot. The bright afternoon sun dazzles Sheppard's casino-dulled vision for a moment, but when it clears he can see very clearly that the guy is on fire. Flames wrap around his body, as he writhes in pain, screaming.

Sheppard takes two steps forward, a vague idea of help in his mind, but the girl reaches out and grabs him by the arm. Her grip is strong as steel, and she holds him back even when he tries to pull away. Helpless, Sheppard stands by her side and watches as the flames consume the man's clothing and light his hair. A moment later, his body dissolves, taking the flames with it, and there's nothing left but dust in the desert air.

"What the hell was that?" he asks, voice a bit too loud, gesturing toward the pile of dust in the parking lot.

"Not exactly the first impression I had in mind."

Actually, his first impression was those legs, but he lives in a city of showgirls. He sees nice legs on a pretty regular basis. This is new.

"What happened to him?" he asks, gesturing toward the pile of dust that was a man only a minute ago.

She gives him a long, assessing look, searching his eyes with her own. They are pale green, the color of desert sage. Finally, just when he's about to give in and flash his badge, she asks, "Do you really want to know?"

"Yeah, I do," Sheppard says. He just watched a man vanish into thin air. It's not the kind of thing he can ignore. This was something major, something important, although he doesn't know exactly why. "I thought I'd seen everything."

"Chances are slim," she says. Then, just when he's half-expecting her to vanish into thin air, too, she introduces herself. "I'm Buffy," she says, holding out a hand to shake. It sounds like a fake name, but Sheppard doesn't care. This is Vegas: everyone has a stage name, even the ones that never see a stage.

"John." He doesn't tell her he's a cop.

She drops her hand. "There's someone that wants to meet you," she says instead of an explanation, and brushes past him, back toward the casino. Sheppard follows her, still hoping she'll explain. He could ask her a hundred questions about who she really is, where she's taking him, and why anyone would want to meet him, but he's always been the type of cop who shoots first and asks questions later. Maybe that's why it took him four tries to make detective. He tells himself he'll learn more this way. It's probably even true.

Buffy leads him down into the basement of the casino, then farther down into musty subterranean storage rooms. She opens a door that was nearly invisible behind a heap of broken chairs and leads him through it into a long metal tube, dry and hot like the sand above. The heat packs a punch after the high-powered air conditioning of the casino.

"Is this a sewer?" he asks, because why else would a pipe this big be buried underneath the Strip? It doesn't smell like a rose garden, but it's not as bad as he imagined, either.

"Flood containment," she says with a crooked grin.

"Safety first," Sheppard says, by way of agreement. Every now and then a flash flood sweeps through the area, but he'd bet his entire paycheck that these tunnels are used for a lot more than diverting excess rainwater.

Buffy sets off down the tunnel as if she knows where she's going, so John follows, watching her miniskirt sway as she walks.

Except for one case where a murder victim was found stuffed in a manhole, John hasn't given the literal underside of his city much thought. The Las Vegas P.D. mostly sticks to patrolling places above ground. Hell, most people in this town don't even have basements. Now he's getting a guided tour of the sewers from a hot blonde. He spares a minute to wonder if the waitress spiked the beer he had for breakfast.

Unbidden, the image of a man on fire appears in Sheppard's mind. He pushes it away, but it reappears in an instant. One moment the guy was there, covered with flames and screaming in pain; the next moment he was gone, reduced to nothing but a pile of dust. Sheppard knows what he saw, but it's not possible. He's reminded of an old joke: _what are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?_

Ahead of him, Buffy approaches an intersection, a place where another giant pipe crosses this one. She turns right, and he follows.

"Do you have a couple dollars?" she asks. Sheppard's so absorbed in his thoughts that he responds without thinking, pulling the ten-dollar chip out of his pocket and passing it over.

"There's a cover charge," she says, which is the kind of explanation that only raises more questions. Sheppard looks more closely at the dim walls of the tunnel, and ahead of them he spots a darker patch in one wall. After a moment he realizes that it's a door.

Buffy grabs the giant wheel attached to the door and turns it easily, pulling the door open and holding it for him. A part of him rebels at letting a lady open the door for him, but it's hardly the strangest thing that's happened today, so he shrugs and walks through.

He finds himself in a bar, dimly-lit but still brighter than the sewer tunnel. The place is half-empty, dominated by a bare stage that holds a sign advertising karaoke six nights a week. Nobody's singing now except the piped-in sound of Sinatra. A guy in a costume that makes him look like half frog and half bear is lurking near the door, and Buffy flips him the casino chip. "How's your brother?" she asks, and the bouncer grunts some kind of response that John can't understand. It must be positive, because they keep moving.

Buffy takes a seat at one end of the bar, with her back to the wall. John sits next to her, wishing he could've gotten that seat and wondering why she would want the strategic vantage point anyway. He glances around the bar. There's a big neon sign on one wall with a crescent moon and a martini glass; three olives on a swizzle stick blink on and off.

The clientele is sparse, and many of them seem to be wearing weird costumes. They studiously look away, as if they know he's law enforcement. Sheppard gets that a lot; he hardly notices it anymore.

"Hello, Sugar Plum," a warm voice says behind him, and he turns swiftly. It's the bartender, and he's dressed in the wackiest outfit yet. He looks like some kind of extra from _Guys and Dolls_ meets _Wicked_ , with his bright purple suit and green face paint. It's entirely possible that's exactly what he is; there are a hundred shows on the Strip and John isn't one of those people who keeps track of them all. "And who have we here?"

"This is Detective Sheppard," Buffy says. John looks at her pointedly; he knows he didn't tell her he was a cop. She just shrugs, but he's seen enough by now that he's not buying her innocent schoolgirl act. He's been played.

"Charmed, I'm sure," the bartender says. His voice is effusively warm and friendly, but he doesn't offer his hand to shake or his own name.

"Oooh, darts!" Buffy says, and a moment later she's gone.

Sheppard turns back to the bartender, resigned. "You wanted to meet me?"

"I have a tip for Las Vegas's finest," the bartender answers. "Normally I'd go through other channels, but well... It seems that you're a part of this case, whether you want it or not."

They're not exactly encouraging words. "Why me?"

"Sorry, Cupcake, my job isn't to ask why. All I know is that you're my guy." He pulls out a piece of white paper and slides it across the bar to Sheppard. Printed on the page are three grainy black and white pictures; they look like they might've been taken with a cell phone. Neat handwritten labels next to the first two pictures say "Blue Diamond," and one says "Cold Creek." Sheppard knows where they are: desert spots outside the city. The pictures show dead bodies, dried-up husks that were probably human once but don't look much like it anymore.

The pattern is a familiar one. A chill runs down his spine. He's already found four bodies matching this pattern, all with a distinctive wound to the center of the chest. Medical examination has turned up nothing.

"Did you take these?" he asks.

The bartender shakes his head. "A friend brought them in. He was scared, Detective."

"He was smart." Or guilty, but Sheppard doesn't say that.

The bartender reaches out and taps the picture with one long red fingernail. "Whatever's going on here, it's outside my scope, if you know what I mean, Cupcake." Sheppard watches his hand move, and for a moment he doesn't see paint and nail polish, he sees green skin flexing over fingers with red claws and four joints.

"I think I do," Sheppard says slowly. "If you think of anything else, give me a call." He pulls a worn business card out of his wallet and slides it across the bar.

"Thank you, Detective."

"No problem." Sheppard says. "Thank you." Somehow the bartender's statement seems to encompass more than just a few pictures of anonymous victims in the desert, and Sheppard's does, too.

"Now go tell that girl to stop scaring my customers," he says. "I need a sea breeze."

As Sheppard makes his way through the bar, the neon moon lights the scene with a comforting synthetic glow. Sinatra sings "Witchcraft," and glasses clink over the low hum of conversation, but the patrons don't seem to be in costume anymore. Instead, everywhere he looks, he sees gills and fangs, tentacles and antennae. He's beneath the streets of Las Vegas, a short walk from the Strip, but Sheppard knows this place is a different world.

He catches up to Buffy next to a dart board; a quick glance shows three darts clustered at the center of the bullseye. "Let's go," he says.

Buffy shrugs, and doesn't ask any questions. As they walk back through the sewers toward the door in the basement of the Flamingo, Sheppard wonders what her part is in all this. He thinks of the pile of dust in the parking lot, of the way she knew his name and her friendliness with the bouncer.

She leads him to a different door and up a set of stairs, and they emerge into an alley behind the Flamingo. Sheppard is surprised to see that the sun is still shining; it's still the middle of the afternoon.

"Can I call you sometime?" he asks, before she can disappear again. She's a mystery he'd love to solve.

"I'll call you," Buffy says, before she turns to go.

A moment later, Sheppard is left alone with his thoughts. A block away, tourists walk the Strip. The desert sun shines down on the casinos, and the excited hum of the city sounds the same as it ever did. Above ground, almost nothing has changed.

Sheppard pulls out his sunglasses and slips them on his face. He has a serial killer to find.


End file.
